New author posting on the novel section. Any advice?

[delta201]

Thank you Darth Mongoose

I was wondering, why do you recommend chapters to be at 1000 words? If my chapters are longer than that, do you think I should split them into parts?

[darthmongoose]

I've been told by novel writers here (including some very successful ones with tens of thousands of readers) that around a thousand is ideal because that's roughly the amount of content Tapas readers are most likely to engage with.
If yours are significantly longer, (over 1500 words especially) I would recommend trying to split them as best you can.

[voyager-gt]

I'm new as well. It's what I've observed from others, though I don't really abide by it. My series wasn't written for Tapas, so I don't worry about it overly much and only really split things to work with the character limit (which will generally let you get to somewhere around 2.5k words). My first three chapters had to be cut in two. The rest of my chapters generally hover somewhere around 1500 - 2000, which is standard webnovel chapter length. But Tapas is its own animal, so yeah.

[delta201]

What do you think of chapters shorter than 1k? Would those be well received?

[delta201]

Why don't you cut your chapters even more?

[voyager-gt]

Because it'd disrupt the flow of the reading. Like I said, they're not written for Tapas. They're not written to be that short. So if I cut them down that much it'll just have a very starty-stoppy flow that'd be more jarring than not. It's written as a longer piece and intended to be read that way. So just chopping it would leave a lot of really awkward and unnatural starting and stopping points.

[darthmongoose]

What do you think of chapters shorter than 1k? Would those be well received?

I feel like if you go shorter than about 800 words, you'll struggle to make updates feel like they have enough happening in them to be compelling. It seems to be all about striking that balance between "it's a pleasing scene or two where stuff happens that engages the reader so they feel like they read something interesting and they want more" and "keeping it short enough to read on your coffee break" and not overwhelming the reader".
You want it to be like... your update pops up and it's the right length where the reader doesn't think "oh geez okay I'll read that in a few days when I have time, I can't spare thirty minutes right now" but also doesn't feel like they'll only get a good reading experience where the story moves along if they wait for chapters to accumulate then read them all in a chunk.

[thedude3445]

Don't post more than once a day, is one obvious but important piece of advice. I have seen so many authors crosspost their stories from other sites and dump all their chapters in big batches, but the algorithms for ranking appear to only work once a day, so each extra update you make is redundant.

I also would stretch out your story's release schedule to 1-2 or 2-3 chapters a week depending on how much content you have ahead of time. 6+ months of backlog is probably best. I made the decision to do daily updates for 90ish days in a row for my first novel here, which helped the story grow quickly in subscribers but did not result in a massive number of reads. However, since finishing my story it has consistently gained new subscribers and readers every week; this site is much more about the "long game" than what you are probably used to on other sites, so it will take a long time to take off even if you are lucky.

You can only post 15,000 characters per chapter, which is approximately 2500 words, so if you have anything over 2000 words, you'll want to split it in half just to be safe.

[alexlcuri07]

Hi~ Fellow novelist here. Welcome to Tapas. @darthmongoose pretty much answered all the questions, including that regular updates at 800-1200 words per episode are the best way to work the system. Most authors here cut a chapter down into smaller bits and post it as parts (Chapter One I, Chapter One II, etc.)

Also keep in mind that if your chapters are longer then there is a character limit per episode. (Oop @thedude3445 beat me to it) lol

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Everyone is pretty friendly around here.

[alexlcuri07]

I feel this very hard but honestly, shorter is better. I'm currently restructuring my series to be shorter episodes because I've found that the audience prefers it. But I did find success with longer episode length (1900~ words ) so anything shorter than that and you'll do fine.

[voyager-gt]

Indeed. I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that if you brought over the series from somewhere else, as I did, I wouldn't really prioritize it as much. Restructuring an entire series for each and every platform it's on would be the height of maddening.

[alexlcuri07]

I thought so too when I moved over from Inkitt. Now I'm mostly doing it because I love it here so much I dropped all the other sites. I'm not saying that to be facetious. It really is just better here.

So if you're new, really consider restructuring. You might like it enough to stay and it's a pain to change later because~

@delta201 You also can't add new episodes between previously posted ones. Just FYI. So if you mess up an upload you have to delete it or painstakingly shift everything over. Please take advantage of the scheduling tool on the site though because its great.

[voyager-gt]

Nah. I'm good. I don't like reading or writing bite-sized anyway. But thanks.

Yeah. I did notice that. But that's an easily-solved issue, as you pointed out.

[cherrystark]

Welcome and to add with what the others have said. Don't forget to give yourself time. It might take you a while before subscribers start coming and your read numbers to grow. Patience is important. I know it can be super discouraging at the start but give yourself time.

[rajillustration]

Like other's have mentioned, if you have a buffer it's ideal, because once you post--that's basically the order your story is now (hopefully one day they'll fix that) and even then, trying to fiddle with things in your scheduled updates is a pain the ass. I decided to add a 10-part chapter to my backlog, and it took nearly an hour to shuffle everything around, because I had to manually change the update schedule on every single episode after that chapter. (and now I'm hella paranoid I did it wrong.) So it's fine to write by the seat of your pants, but maybe finish your story before you start posting it because once you commit, you are committed.

For this reason I have hella short updates, about 3,000-5,000 characters each (which is about 500-900 words), because later when I'm reading through it again for spell checking and grammar checking reasons, and I feel like I want to add stuff (and I will do that quite a bit) I have room to add the stuff I want to say. Don't go too close to the limit or you are basically trapped in that wordcount. It's weird because in webcomics we are pressured to have as long of episodes as possible, and people will comment demanding longer updates, but in Tapas novels--nah. There's no pressure to do that.

Another thing is that you can add art! There's a few threads on here on how to do it--and I highly recommend having something visual in the first few updates, if you can draw. That and you can add music from soundcloud with each update, which I do, and I think only a few people use it, but it is a fun feature I didn't know was here for quite a while and I enjoy reading novels that have music attached.

And finally, if you do make changes to your past updates--don't notify your followers that you have or it will every, single, time, and it bothers people. They'll be notified when you update--that's what they're looking for. They don't really care if you changed spellings or moved around some sentences.

[Penni]

The best advice I can give is

• Focus on making the best product you can (while continuing to learn how to improve)

• Be consistent. Having a consistent upload schedule is really important for making the Fresh and potentially the Trending pages. (I've also noticed that updating during the week rather than the weekend has been better)

• Word count per chapter: I typically have 1k - 1,200k a chapter. None of my readers have said anything about a longer or shorter so do what you want there

• Views, likes, and comments factor into how much visibility you may get. Try to use your author's notes to your advantage by encouraging comments - such as asking open ended-questions or asking for their opinion.

• Engage with the community. No better way for people to learn your name than to be an active member of the community. Really get to know people around here! I've learned a lot from the fellow writers that I've met ^^

• And, of course, continue to ask questions if you have them!

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

Don't know if this is useful but I'm pretty sure that Views here aren't the same as "reads".

[justasicanbesocruel]

I'd like to add onto the consistency - but also, TIME AND DAY is very important. I published at eleven am, two in the afternoon, and then I think four pm...trickle views. Once I changed to 4,5 or 9 am, I got a big bump. Find the perfect time to publish and keep consistently publishing on that day and time.

[delta201]

Could you elaborate on what your timezone is?

[justasicanbesocruel]

Pacific. I think I've had my best luck at 4-5am my time. The story I have at 9am has 50 less views than the others, and I'm not sure if it's because of the story or the time, but I'll be switching it to 4am from now on to see if it really gives me more of a bump.